Towards more accurate statistics on femicide: global advances in measuring gender-based violence
Measuring femicide continues to be one of the most significant challenges for statistical and justice systems in the region. Although many countries have made progress in legally recognizing gender-based murders of women, the lack of comparable, comprehensive, and timely data limits understanding of the phenomenon and hinders the design of effective public policies. Faced with this challenge, international organizations and national statistical offices have promoted the development of methodological standards and harmonized statistical frameworks to strengthen the quality of information and its comparability at the international level.
In this context, on March 2, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and UN Women organized the forum “Measuring gender-based killings of women and girls: Guidance for implementation and adaptation to the digital environment,” held within the framework of the 57th session of the United Nations Statistical Commission. The meeting brought together international experts, representatives of national statistical offices, and justice sector authorities to present technical advances and share experiences in implementing the Statistical Framework for Measuring Gender-Related Homicide of Women and Girls (Femicide/Feminicide), a tool developed to strengthen the production of comparable statistics on this crime.
During the welcome address, Papa Seck, Chief of the Research and Data Section at UN Women, emphasized the importance of improving statistical identification of the phenomenon: “Many cases of femicide go unnoticed and are not recorded in official statistics. When femicide is not fully identified and correctly measured, we limit our ability to understand its scope and design effective prevention strategies.”
To place the debate in context, David Rausis, a United Nations statistician, presented the global picture of murders of women and girls. His presentation drew on findings from international studies that highlight the magnitude of the problem: every year, tens of thousands of women are murdered for gender-related reasons and, in many cases, the statistics lack sufficient information on the relationship between victim and perpetrator or the circumstances of the crime. This lack of data makes it difficult to gauge the scale of the phenomenon and design effective public policies.
During the event, the main advances in the implementation of the Statistical Framework for Measuring Gender-Related Homicides of Women and Girls were presented. This initiative seeks to strengthen information systems through common methodological standards.
The framework promotes the development of statistical and operational tools to improve the quality, comparability, and usefulness of data, including:
Conceptual and methodological harmonization to identify gender-based homicides of women and girls.
Incorporation of key variables on the relationship between victim and perpetrator, crime context, and history of violence.
Adoption of international statistical classifications, such as the International Classification of Crimes for Statistical Purposes (ICCS).
Strengthening of data governance through coordination mechanisms between institutions responsible for generating information.
On this last point, the importance of data governance was highlighted as a fundamental component for integrating information from different sources (police, prosecutors, judicial systems, and statistics offices). However, countries face significant challenges, such as fragmented registration systems, legal limitations on information sharing, and the need to improve interoperability between institutions.
Likewise, UNODC, UN Women, and the Center of Excellence for Statistical Information on Government, Public Security, Victimization, and Justice have promoted pilot implementations of the framework in different countries, with the aim of evaluating existing registration systems and strengthening technical capacities for the production of statistics on femicide.
The experiences shared during the dialogue made it possible to identify key good practices for improving the measurement of femicide in national statistical systems, including:
Integration of information from multiple institutions in the justice system.
Adoption of international standards for the classification of crimes.
Development of administrative records that incorporate specific variables on gender-based violence.
Strengthening inter-institutional coordination for data exchange.
In this context, Mildred Martínez, Director General of the National Statistics Office of the Dominican Republic, shared the country's progress in adopting the International Classification of Crimes for Statistical Purposes (ICCS) and strengthening registration systems to improve the identification and analysis of femicides, highlighting the support provided by the Center of Excellence.
The forum also provided a space for dialogue between specialists, statistical authorities, and representatives of international organizations to discuss the challenges and opportunities in producing data on femicide.
The dialogue also aimed to inform countries about the progress made and tools available to improve the measurement of femicide, as well as to encourage more governments and institutions to join these international efforts, strengthening technical cooperation and the exchange of good practices.
The experts agreed that having solid, interoperable, and comparable statistics is essential to better understand femicide and design more effective public policies for its prevention.
Initiatives such as the Statistical Framework for Measuring Gender-Related Homicide of Women and Girls are thus strategic tools for strengthening statistical systems in the region, promoting international cooperation, and advancing toward a more accurate understanding of this phenomenon, contributing to the development of evidence-based policies to eradicate violence against women and girls.